Die, "Noble" Lie!
I've been learning that tons of "Noble" lie type beliefs are out there. Here I'll mostly talk about the traditional version we have in the west. Christianity, Patriarchy, that sort of thing. The Chinese government might be the largest and most powerful one in the world right now, with their censorship of history and dissent, and the censors believing it is necessary. Some things are so important to people, they believe that it's ok to lie to achieve them. Or use other desperate measures, such as violence. Though generally they try to keep things secret first, which is just the passive way of hiding the truth. (And I think a lot of these people who are too afraid to talk to their kids about sex are the same people who call themselves the "silent majority" too intimidated by liberals to speak their mind on politics and such) Well, turns out, that wrongheadedness applies to some very major kludge memes here in the west, and elsewhere. God, Christianity Many people believe you need to believe in god in order to be moral. Discussions about whether there is a god or not even get derailed by this. Because if it's a necessary belief, who would dare make people disbelieve it? But this lie is all nonsense. So is the lie about god existing. The two lies feed on each other, and you can "justify" lying in order to promote belief in god. "So they have to argue all that horror is not only not bad, it’s supremely good, the very best that God could ever permit, that there is literally no better world, nor any better sequence of events, that God could produce." That's a pretty good description of the entire traditionalist attitude towards progress, isn't it? "It's the best we can do! Don't fix something that...isn't broken!" The old-fashioned family Similarly, "the traditional family". Since they believe the raising of children and maintaining civilization will fail unless done with units of: * one adult man as leader * one woman wife (adulthood optional) * and children they believe that censoring and slandering other kinds of relationships (whether gay or polyamorous) is justified. People literally believe that the "breakdown" of the traditional family will lead to the collapse of western civilization. And this makes you realize some things. This is how they justify so many terrible things. The Reagan Administration's inaction during the AIDS crisis, for example. They can only believe that worse consequences for straying from the traditional model (where people only ever have sex with one other person in their lives) is a good or necessary thing. And lies, deception, and secrecy are employed. They want deviations to be secret, they don't want the children to know gays exist or any of the other stuff. And they'll spread lies that gays are psychopaths and whatever else. Reproduction, roles Discussing some of the memetics here is tricky because we have very few other words to describe what's going on. The traditional set of memes are the only ones we've got. Though there are memetic mutations and variations (many of which seem like they are just more logically coherent versions of the common traditional meme system, minus the idea that people morally should fit into the one of the two categories assigned to them at birth), there aren't really any completely separate new "species" of meme to rival the traditional species so far. Maybe there never will be. Anyways, so roles and person types are a major part of the traditional social model. Forget "family", it's an entire social model. They only call it "family" because they know you don't know what they really mean, you'll just think the word "family" sounds like it's full of love. But love is possible (even better for a lot of people, actually) outside of the traditional model, and so their words games are really quite deceptive. Anyways ya so the memes are about classifying and organizing people from birth (or before) onwards. Cultivating cogs in the traditional machine. The baby is appraised to see if it fits characteristics the traditional model considers so highly relevant that it will determine a lot of their entire life in a traditional system. The ones who grow more offspring inside them are labelled girls, and expected to take on certain roles in society. Most others are labelled boys and get a different role. Biology doesn't easily fit into two neat categories, there are "intersex" people, but traditionalists aren't concerned with that, they really just want a system that's "good enough" to keep going, and never deviate much from it, lest civilization collapse! The memes are put into the young minds "pink is for girls", "if a woman penetrates you with a strap-on, that's gay". This all comes together kind of like our immediate understanding of language, or our recognition of objects. It becomes part of the System 1 perceptions. It seems plausible that perception of sexual attractiveness is innate, but "who is attractive" differs from person to person (in my experience it can change over time, depending on who is in my life), and a lot of that does not align with this memetic system. This is the traditional gender system. A system of memetics our brains "attach" to physical bodies, and perceive as what people "are". A lot of regressive nonsense really comes down to this same system of memes. Sexism and anti-feminism, homophobia, anti-gay marriage, transphobia, anti-sex-before-marriage, anti-sex-education, anti-contraception, anti-abortion, monogamy-centric, anti-polyamory, anti-divorce, and generally trying to make humans fit into a role/life they don't fit into. Like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And, of course, lies are deployed by traditionalists here. When secrecy fails. On top of that list, I recently saw [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bbINLWtMKI this Contrapoints video] an interesting case: adoption. It's interesting because it's a minor deviation from the traditional norm that traditionalists probably think is fine, good even. It highlights some of the practical logic of what counts as a bad deviation (violating the letter of the "law" is ok if the spirit of the "law" is upheld). It's also worth noting that the bible had polygamy...and there's lots of other examples of changes over time. See also *why we need to use the truth rather than "noble" lies *here's a blog post where Richard Carrier talks a lot about political ideologies based on myths, and reacting with irrationality out of fear *There is a known trend of people who are extremely pro-capitalism turning to fascism. It looks contradictory, these extreme "libertarians" turning to tyranny? But it makes sense if you see they really do fear that civilization will collapse if we don't stop "the communists". These people don't usually use a "noble" lie, but you can imagine nazi-style propaganda having a similar motive. Here in Alberta, the UCP wants to protect the right to "property" as essential, which means they have some fear of communism. They do also mention the "family unit" and that sort of thing. *fucking Plato, the father of "noble" lie theory *Leisure VS Productivity, "repression of man's savage nature" theory *the edges and foundations of the good context